St. Ann's Well Gardens is a park in Hove, East Sussex, about half a mile from the shore. The park is renowned for its chalybeate (iron bearing) spring, which is now named St. Ann's Well. In this case, the name "St. Ann" does not refer to any saint. Instead, the name was apparently based on a myth of Annafrieda, a Saxon lady whose lover was murdered. Her tears miraculously became the Chalybeate Spring which is now called St. Ann's Well.
St. Ann's Well Gardens has many native and exotic trees. It also has a scented garden that allow the visitor to experience many different smells.
St. Ann's Well Gardens is owned and operated by Brighton and Hove City Council. As well as the scented garden, the park has playgrounds for children, with swings, slides etc. Dogs are forbidden in the children's areas, while the rest of the park is a popular place for local residents to exercise their pets.
In addition there are the following facilities:
The park can be accessed by Nizells Avenue, Furze Hill and Somerhill Road.
The chalybeate spring in St. Ann's Well Gardens might have been known for many years. The City Parks web site notes that the chalybeate spring in St. Ann's Well Gardens is the endpoint of a ley line. [1]
St. Ann's Well Gardens was part of the Wick Estate in the Middle Ages, which was a strip of land that extended inland to the edge of Preston manor. The Wick Estate was owned by the Stapley family from 1573 until 1701 when it was sold to a family of Brighton brewers, the Scutts.
There was a health spa named the Chalybeate Spa [2] in Hove featuring the St. Ann's Well spring operating as early as the 18th century. At that time, the spring had considerably greater flow than it does at present. [3] [4] In the 1760s, the Scutts made a number of improvements associated with the spring. Around 1800 an elaborate "pump room" was built over the spring, housing assorted facilities and accommodating the large numbers who came seeking therapeutic relief at that time. At the pumphouse at the top of the hill in the park, people could drink the brown waters of the spring (at some times of the year, the waters are closer to yellow).
This area became a popular destination, and some of them came to enjoy the Chalybeate Spa at St. Ann's Well. Many people came to the area to enjoy the shore, and other attractions. There were pleasure gardens at the Georgian and Regency Seaside Resorts in neighbouring Brighton at the time. [5]
In the early 19th century, the Reverend Thomas Scutt redesigned the pump room building. Rev. Scutt added a colonnade which was featured in many prints.
In 1825, Rev. Scutt sold off part of the Wick Estate. This land became the Brunswick Estate.
In 1830 the remaining land in the Wick Estate was sold to financier and philanthropist Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, who moved into the Wick Lodge. [6] Sir Isaac Goldsmid was the first to create the gardens that now exist. When Sir Isaac died in 1859, members of the Goldsmid family that inherited the Goldsmid Estate continued to develop the gardens and surrounding area.
Mrs Fitzherbert wrote that "....the waters have wonderfully improved my health and strength." after a visit to the Spa in 1830. In 1882 the Brighton Gazette wrote that St. Ann's Well was 'one of the finest springs in Europe'. However, the distance of the Spa from Brighton, competition from other facilities, and a slow decline in the flow of the spring lead to the spa's declining popularity, and it eventually closed. The fields around the spring were dug up to use in the local brick-making business. The places where the mud was removed to make bricks are still visible in the park.
In 1894 (some sources give a date of 1892), George Albert Smith (1864–1959), a pioneer in the film industry, leased St Ann's Well Gardens from the Goldsmid family. He was devoted to commercially developing the gardens, which he named "St. Anne's Well Pleasure Gardens". Smith's pleasure gardens included novelties such as demonstrations of hot air ballooning and parachute jumps, a monkey house, a fortune teller and a hermit living in a cave.
In addition, Smith used the pump house as a film laboratory, and produced about 50 short films a year there. Some claim that this was the birthplace of film editing. Later, Smith had a glass house film studio built on the grounds.
In 1904, A. H. Tee took over the lease on St Ann's Well Gardens from G. Albert Smith, as Smith moved his film businesses to another site.
In 1908, the local authorities bought the gardens for £10,000 and the park was opened to the public on Empire Day in 1908.
There was a clock in front of the old pumphouse, donated by Mrs Flora Sassoon, widow of wealthy business man Sassoon David Sassoon of Ashley Park near Walton-on-Thames, who had relocated to Hove with many other members of the Sassoon family. In 1913 Mrs Sassoon also bought and donated 1 acre (0.40 ha) of land which became the croquet lawns (now the lawn bowling facility). She also donated turf, croquet equipment, summer houses, statues and similar decorative items. [7]
Because the spring's flow had slowed, the pump room was demolished in 1935, and a mock wellhead was installed in its place. After the local government bought the park, neighbouring buildings like the Grasshopper Cottage, near the bowling green, and the Wick Farmhouse were incorporated into the park, but these were demolished after the second World War. A Swiss chalet-style cafe was a bit rustic, and therefore was replaced by a modern building in the 1970s. These changes were met with some local protest, but to no avail.
In the months leading up to the park's centenary, interest in a celebration led to the formation of a Friends group for the park. On 24 May 2008 a 100th birthday party was held, and the group continues to celebrate the park and arrange regular events.
Hove is a seaside resort in East Sussex, England. Alongside Brighton, it is one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove.
Brighton and Hove is a unitary authority with city status in East Sussex, England. There are multiple villages alongside the seaside resorts of Brighton and Hove in the district. It is administered by Brighton and Hove City Council, which is currently under Labour majority control.
Chalybeate waters, also known as ferruginous waters, are mineral spring waters containing salts of iron.
Whitehawk is a suburb in the east of Brighton, England, south of Bevendean and north of Brighton Marina. The area is a large, modern housing estate built in a downland dry valley historically known as Whitehawk Bottom. The estate was originally developed by the local council between 1933 and 1937 and included nearly 1,200 residences. Subsequently, the Swanborough flats were built in 1967, and in the 1970s and 1980s much of the estate was rebuilt by altering the road layouts and increasing the number of houses. Whitehawk is part of the East Brighton ward of Brighton and Hove City Council.
George Albert Smith was an English stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, inventor and a key member of the loose association of early film pioneers dubbed the Brighton School by French film historian Georges Sadoul. He is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short films from 1897 to 1903, which pioneered film editing and close-ups, and his development of the first successful colour film process, Kinemacolor.
Dorton Spa is a chalybeate spring located between the villages of Dorton and Brill in Buckinghamshire, England, in a grove of trees called "Spa Wood". Chalybeate is defined as "a water or other liquor containing iron", the word's origin is Greek chalyps; chalybos, meaning steel; Chalyps being an ancient nation in Pontus famous for its steel. A nineteenth century chemical dictionary describes the Dorton Spa as the most celebrated chalybeate and from the account "there is nothing in England to compete with it, which is nearly four times as strongly impregnated with iron as Tunbridge waters and almost as powerful as the famed waters of Toplitz, Germany".
Queen's Park is a public park in Brighton, England.
St John the Baptist's Church is an Anglican church in Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It was built between 1852 and 1854 to serve the community of the Brunswick area of Hove, which had originally been established in the 1830s.
St Patrick's Church is an Anglican church in Hove, in the English city of Brighton and Hove. Situated on a narrow site at 3 Cambridge Road, off Western Road close to the boundary with Brighton, it is still in use as a place of worship. Since 1985 St Pat's developed a special ministry with homeless people, setting up a night shelter and a homeless hostel. In 2012, St Patrick's night shelter was closed. The homeless hostel continues to operate under new management, and is currently run by Riverside Housing Association. The church closed as a parish in 2015, and was then entrusted by the Bishop of Chichester to the Chemin Neuf Community under a Bishop's Mission Order. The leader of the Chemin Neuf Mission at St Patrick's is currently the Revd Tim Watson.
Sir Julian Goldsmid, 3rd Baronet, DL, JP was a British lawyer, businessman and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1866 and 1896.
Holland Road Baptist Church is a Baptist church in Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. Built in 1887 to replace a temporary building on the same site, which had in turn superseded the congregation's previous meeting place in a nearby gymnasium, it expanded to take in nearby buildings and is a landmark on Holland Road, a main north–south route in Hove. It is one of ten extant Baptist church buildings in the city, and is the only one to have been listed by English Heritage in view of its architectural importance.
St. Ann's Well or St. Anne's Well may refer to:
Brighton and Hove, a city on the English Channel coast in southeast England, has a large and diverse stock of buildings "unrivalled architecturally" among the country's seaside resorts. The urban area, designated a city in 2000, is made up of the formerly separate towns of Brighton and Hove, nearby villages such as Portslade, Patcham and Rottingdean, and 20th-century estates such as Moulsecoomb and Mile Oak. The conurbation was first united in 1997 as a unitary authority and has a population of about 253,000. About half of the 20,430-acre (8,270 ha) geographical area is classed as built up.
Carlton Hill is an inner-city area of Brighton, part of the English city and seaside resort of Brighton and Hove. First developed in the early and mid-19th century on steeply sloping farmland east of central Brighton, it grew rapidly as the town became a fashionable, high-class destination. Carlton Hill's population was always poor, though, and by the early 20th century the area was Brighton's worst slum: overcrowding, crime and disease were rife. Extensive slum clearance in the mid-20th century introduced high-density tower blocks, but some old buildings remain: in 2008, Brighton and Hove City Council designated part of Carlton Hill as the city's 34th conservation area. The area now has housing of various styles and ages, large offices and small-scale industry; there are also churches, a school and some open space.
Gwydyr Mansions is a block of mansion flats in the centre of Hove, part of the English coastal city of Brighton and Hove. Built on the initiative of a Baptist pastor and designed by the prolific architecture firm of Clayton & Black, the "elegant" Flemish Renaissance-style building dates from 1890 and overlooks a central square. As originally built, the block had a restaurant and barber shop for residents; the latter is still operational.
The Anthaeum was an iron and glass conservatory planned by English botanist and landscape gardener Henry Phillips and designed by architect Amon Henry Wilds on land owned by Sir Isaac Goldsmid in Hove, a Sussex seaside town which is now part of the city of Brighton and Hove. Conceived on a grand scale and consisting of a gigantic cupola-topped dome covering more than 1.5 acres (0.61 ha), the structure was intended to enclose a carefully landscaped tropical garden, with exotic trees and shrubs, lakes, rockeries and other attractions. The scheme was a larger and more ambitious version of a project Phillips and Wilds had worked on in 1825 in Hove's larger neighbour Brighton, for which money had run out before work could commence. Unlike its predecessor, the Anthaeum was built: work began in 1832 and an opening ceremony was planned for 31 August 1833. Disagreements between the architect, the project engineer and the building contractor led to structural problems being overlooked or ignored, though, and the day before it opened the Anthaeum collapsed spectacularly. Its wreckage stayed for nearly 20 years overlooking Adelaide Crescent, a seafront residential set-piece whose northern side it adjoined, and Phillips went blind from the shock of watching the largest of his many projects end in disaster. Palmeira Square, another residential development, has occupied the site since the late 19th century.
Palmeira Square is a mid-19th-century residential development in Hove, part of the English city and seaside resort of Brighton and Hove. At the southern end it adjoins Adelaide Crescent, another architectural set-piece which leads down to the seafront; large terraced houses occupy its west and east sides, separated by a public garden; and at the north end is one of Hove's main road junctions. This is also called Palmeira Square, and its north side is lined with late 19th-century terraced mansions. Commercial buildings and a church also stand on the main road, which is served by Brighton & Hove bus routes 1, 1A, N1, 2, 5, 5A, 5B, N5, 6, 25, 46, 49, 60, 71, 71A and 96.
Adelaide Mansions is a residential building on the seafront in Hove, part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England. The "handsome block", decorated with ornate details, was erected in 1873 to the design of local architect Thomas Lainson. English Heritage has listed the building at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
Adelaide Crescent is a mid-19th-century residential development in Hove, part of the English city and seaside resort of Brighton and Hove. Conceived as an ambitious attempt to rival the large, high-class Kemp Town estate east of Brighton, the crescent was not built to its original plan because time and money were insufficient. Nevertheless, together with its northerly neighbour Palmeira Square, it forms one of Hove's most important architectural set-pieces. Building work started in 1830 to the design of Decimus Burton. The adjacent land was originally occupied by "the world's largest conservatory", the Anthaeum; its collapse stopped construction of the crescent, which did not resume until the 1850s. The original design was modified and the crescent was eventually finished in the mid-1860s. Together with the Kemp Town and Brunswick Town estates, the crescent is one of the foremost pre-Victorian residential developments in the Brighton area: it has been claimed that "outside Bath, [they] have no superior in England". The buildings in the main part of Adelaide Crescent are Grade II* listed. Some of the associated buildings at the sea-facing south end are listed at the lower Grade II.
Media related to St Ann's Well Gardens, Hove at Wikimedia Commons50°49′46″N00°09′24″W / 50.82944°N 0.15667°W
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